NEW MEDIA: 100 DAYS Teaser
I’ve put together a hypertext piece connecting the artists to each other and to their websites as:
Archive for the ‘NEW MEDIA’ Category
NEW MEDIA: Poetry
No wonder not even friends will comment on my posted poetry; I’m just not with the program of contemporary tastes: Poem for Randy Prunty by James Saunders. The next one, Sports, Part I, by Ken Goldsmith started while I’m writing this post and I’ll withhold comment because what the hell do I know.
The idea of the site, textsound, is a wonderfully creative idea and I’m exploring some of the other poetry available here and maybe learn something.
NEW MEDIA & SOCIAL NETWORKING: Memes and Such
Susan doesn’t do memes and lists and when tagged, refuses to be “it.”
She isn’t antisocial exactly, nor necessarily dull and vague as a banana. She’s had threescore and one year behind her so there’s some experience from which to draw, albeit some of which is both shamefully and delightfully too private for sharing with either friends or strangers. Unfortunately, those same years deprive her of full memory without the taint of her creative force seeping through the cubicles of her mind.
No, there is no movie or book or song that forever changed her life; made a blip perhaps that created a perspective that hadn’t been used before as a monocle on daily living, but no great change in and of itself. Favorites, yes; she can do favorites, though the list is constantly changing and she’d ask to be limited to the top three, or five at most. Favorites are not favorites above a certain number I would think.
Which brings up another reason why these questionnaires are no longer being filled and forwarded; the people I would care about I already know about or will…by conversation.
NEW MEDIA: Methods of Communication
While I’m settling into the WordPress format and repairing whatever mistakes I’ve made along the way, I’ve also made up a new home page for the Mac, one I’d set up a long time ago but never got into.
Netvibes was a good choice for a home page since it allows many widgets and plugins and stuff to fill the page easily with what I’m mainly interested in seeing first thing on the screen. One gets used to a certain arrangement of things–guess that’s why they call it “home.” But my Excite page that I’ve always used for years had stopped making the investment portfolio available and once upon a time that was vital info to me. I’ve since found a few different plugins that serve the purpose, but really, I don’t even want to watch my future crumble in today’s scenario. The only other thing I really liked at Excite was a local tv listings grid and while I can’t find something like that, I’ve been able to delete most of the other data off the site and just link to Excite for that purpose. A bit more trouble, but I’m adapting.
What I don’t have completely set up yet and have been working on is a Public Netvibes page–though even in its undeveloped form it’s had two requests for befriending; one of which was a request to help the user learn English whereby he’d teach me Turkish in return.
Which brings me to some of the other social networking systems I’ve joined, such as twitter and Facebook. I like twitter; it allows me to voice those little random thoughts or doings that run through the day. Since I’ve been asked not to twitter so often, I’ve learned to curb my urges to tweet on impulse, though I suppose any who don’t like what I do or say have full freedom to stop following me. I don’t follow a lot of those who follow me; maybe I’m just antisocial, but it doesn’t seem necessary to me to have hundreds of so-named ‘friends’ when I don’t have anything in common with them except for the service itself. Same with Facebook; I know lots of people on Facebook but I’ve only invited one person to follow me, though I’ve responded to all who have asked me the same.
What’s odd about Facebook, to me, is that in searching around, there are so many people I know but they are all from different parts and times of my life. It just would seem odd to merge family, co-workers, friends, etc. all together on one plane in time. This is something I need to investigate further.
The weblog is what I’m most comfortable with working in. Perhaps it’s just my stubborn streak in learning the new, or making changes, or adding to what is already a heavy writing schedule and scattered arena of the internet. This too is something I need to delve into further; to find a place or two that brings everything together in their own separate modules.
NEW MEDIA: Moviemaking Fun
Spent a good part of today playing with the animation service over at xtranormal–free for now, but I’m sure these good folk will be charging soon. I’ve made three mini-movies so far, actually five but that’s just because you can’t really edit your work and we all know how many drafts I go through on my works.
Here’s my favorite (the rest can be seen at the site):
NEW MEDIA: The Newest Kindle
Even with Amazon's offer of Oprah's $50 off certificate, the newest Kindle still runs $309 which is all well and good, but the books are where I get off the new technology train.
New releases and best sellers are $9.99 each. Yes, you can store but you can't share a book unless you lend out your Kindle too. On the seller's side, he's selling the same book over and over again without much cost to him. You also can't put the book on your shelf. It just remains asleep inside your Kindle until you run out of room and replace it.
Now maybe it's because I don't usually read the bestsellers (at least for another twenty years–I'm a hard person to convince) so maybe I'd save money because the classics that I seek would be much cheaper–I don't know, I haven't looked. But then, aren't 'classics' meant to remain on bookshelves for re-reading? Or maybe it's because I'm a physical type; I need to touch paper and smell the musty pages and see the color of the book cover to make me feel a part of the experience.
Maybe once Kindle's price per book goes down a bit, or maybe when it allows you to post to your weblog as you read–since that's my main interaction with books–I'll reconsider. Or maybe when I'm a world traveler and need six months' supply of reading as I trampsteam down the river to Timbuktu. But for now, I guess I'll have to stick with my old-lady laprobe, flipping pages, and forever falling-out bookmark.
NEW MEDIA: The Pros and Cons of Social Networking
(UPDATE: More on Social Networking, a series of postings at Hypercompendia/Social Networking)
We've embraced the wonders of the internet, the amazing opportunities it offers and the world it opens up to every individual with computer access. We've come a long way from piling into the wagon to drive fifty miles to Grandma's for a weekend visit. The postal service has improved since they've been able to use mailtrucks and airplanes instead of horses and steamships. The telephone added the sense of hearing though the visual suffered for it. And now the web along with weblogs and twitter and Facebook and a dozen different social networking services limits the dark corners to hide in.
But even the weblog is outdated, I've heard, and it's being suggested that we "pull the plug on blogs":
The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.
If you quit now, you're in good company. Notorious chatterbox Jason Calacanis made millions from his Weblogs network. But he flat-out retired
his own blog in July. "Blogging is simply too big, too impersonal, and
lacks the intimacy that drew me to it," he wrote in his final post.
Now I've likely just hurt someone's feelings by being less than enthusiastic about joining diigo after sending an email with data to share. I've apologized, and I do understand the use of diigo (or I'm trying to) as a tool for sharing, but it seems that while I've breached a certain code of camaraderie in wanting to pass information to an individual rather than splatter it on a website, it does take away even that little smidgen of a personal touch that email manages to cling to.
I'll admit that I'm eternally grateful to the system, and likely one of the very same type of person I'm here to complain about. "I'm a writer, I'll send you an email," I say, often staving off the phone conversation that once was an important part of my life. Nowadays, there are only a few friends I talk to via telephone–and that's actual voice-talking, not text messaging. Once email and weblogs were invented, I figured I'd found my niche. I've also dabbled in Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Plurk, and now diigo.
But there're some drawbacks to the social networking via the web. It's not something I've done a study on, but I've been getting the general feeling of a lack of politeness in both the real world and the semi-real world of the internet. For example, with job postings and responses done via websites, there are hundreds competing for the same job, so I do understand that response from a prospective employer would be more difficult, but these days, an applicant never knows if he's being considered or got dumped within minutes. Because it's so easy to avoid responding, this same thing is happening on weblogs, and in the social networking groups. Just for shits, I've written some outrageous things on twitter or on a blog (and some deeper, more personal sharings) and received absolutely no conversation. You know folks have read it, and yet there's no human reaction as a sign of empathy or surprise or whatever. While you've made some friends via these means, the friends that you might ordinarily expect to talk with in person (if they read your web communications at all), have that option of ignoring what they read.
How would this play out in person? Would they silently turn around and walk away? See, social networking on the internet isn't really very social when you look at it that way. Here's another viewpoint, from Don Tennant at ComputerWorld, referring to another article by Kip Layton, a school administrator in a tiny town in Alaska regarding email and its effect on handwriing. Don gives us his feelings about snail mail when his son's computer is down:
People over 35 generally have lovely handwriting. The 25-to-35 age
group has decent handwriting. And the under-25 crowd is a legibility
laughingstock. It's all because of computers. And it's kind of a shame.
(…) I clearly could have written the letters on my computer and printed
them out, but I didn't. I suppose the reason is that I can remember as
a kid getting letters from my mom and dad and noticing their different
styles of handwriting and appreciating that unique personal expression.
I wanted my son to see that same expressiveness and individuality and
personality in my correspondence with him, so I've been writing my
letters to him longhand.
Hadn't thought of that; I treasure recipes, notes, cards, little papers where the writing is clearly that of my mother, or my father, or someone else dear to me. It's not as personal as physical presence, but it's sure a step above the cold type of an email.
Now maybe I'm just more bothered by this than most folk, as I'm more the type that have a precious few close friends and another layer of well, friends, and a lot of acquaintances so I'm not trying to expand either my presence or my popularity. But I see more than just a separate society online. Frankly, I see the same avoidance of connection, the rudeness, the same distancing that expands a circle of friends to global yet moves those one would be in contact with via phone or in person to that same level, and that same ease of slipping away that the internet allows creeping into the realities of face to face living. It need not be that way, but there's a couple of generations now that have been brought up in this new world of great possibility and possible dehumanization of society. And some of us, the ones who notice these things, won't be here to remember them.
NEW MEDIA: Techno Writing
A very interesting view from Writinghood on the impact of blogging and text messaging on the written word: Is Technology Killing Writing?
I would agree with the assessment, but I think that while writing skills may be improving (LOL ur rite! notwithstanding), in my mind there’s a breakdown of the face to face communication skills that include facial expression and gestures of body language since we’ve come to depend upon all caps and exclamation points and key signs such as 
to express the feeling behind the words. There is also more of a tendency to rely on methods that really distance our relationships. And this presents a catch-22 situation perhaps; while there is wider range of communication–people we might never have had contact with otherwise whom we have reached via weblogs, social networking, and text messaging–there is also the circle that we have found we can more easily keep up with via these methods and so face to face has become the rarity. In that manner, we are indeed distancing ourselves from relationships.
There’s research I’m sure on the changes that technology has made in our interpersonal communications, just as letter writing via the U.S. mail, telegraph, telephones and two tin cans and a string have changed the nature of man.
NEW MEDIA: A Rose by Any Other Name…
…but really, plurk?
Technology and new media create their own vocabulary but who in their heart of hearts will not admit they hate the word blog? I’d signed onto plurk when I couldn’t get back on twitter though twitter is certainly not an obnoxious word and now that my account has been restored (after I’d dumped it) I think I’ll likely plunk plurk.
What is it with the tempo of the times that gives us silly words for socializing and initials for our medical conditions?
NEW MEDIA: Twitter and Blog-Clog
It’s been one of them days where I can do no wrong: customers coming in to pick up and PAY; an unexpected cash windfall; a submission reaching the final level; a new job site found that listed a job I’d be perfect at; the replacement pc shipped yesterday 2nd day air; the sun’s shining.
So what am I whining about now?
Well, I’ve been deliberately avoiding restoring my Twitter account but it seems that for the last several days–and this post is a prime example–I’ve been posting my little snits and snatches of sharing here instead and that’s been clogging up Spinning which is supposed to be a weblog dedicated to literature and the reading and writing thereof.
The problem? Twitter’s "Restore Account" feature is on the fritz today.
NEW MEDIA: New Stuff
Some neat new pieces over at Alan Bigelow’s Webyarns, including an interactive cartoon that brings in a bit of animation.
NEW MEDIA LITERATURE: Shadow of the Stars – Preview
Our good buddies Josh & Kas Radke have a preview of Kas’ book, Shadow of the Stars on their website of the newly formed Grail Quest Books.
The ten-page preview gives the background of this epic that Kas has written, and is due to be completed before the end of summer. There are some awesome graphics and I particularly like the choice of colors that are bold and bright and show the detail of the action.
I’m looking forward to publication and take the opportunity now to congratulate this hardworking and talented couple!
NEW MEDIA LITERATURE: KaPOW!
Just glanced at it but wanted to immediately share this preview story from the new publishing outfit, Grail Quest Books–our friends, Josh and Kas Radke. Beautiful graphics–just outstanding artwork and design so far:
NEW MEDIA: Hypertext 08
One week away from the Hypertext 2008 Conference in Pittsburgh, PA and I’m pretty much ready for that with a presentation for the workshop headed by Steve Ersinghaus where I’ll be showing the process of my work with Storyspace and Hypertextopia. I’ll be happy to finally meet Mark Bernstein, Juan Gutierrez, Mark Marino, Chris Crawford, Alan Bigelow, and so many of the other hypertext celebrities I’ve only known through their work and websites.
I’m also getting a lot of the picture framing done, cleaning the house, and making sure my husband has enough ironed shirts and slacks to last until he meets a new woman in case something happens to me.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology